NO. 41.-1890.] REBELION DE CEYLAN. 



561 



considered over all the most important points upon which 

 depended the whole future of the war of conquests, so 

 as to justify himself with the Count- Admiral, who had 

 received orders from Portugal to keep the peace with 

 Candid; and to make it appear to that prince, without 

 adding or taking away anything from the counsellors' 

 words, who with one accord represented how much the 

 reputation of the Crown had lost by quietly ignoring and 

 putting up with the insults the King of Candia had openly 

 offered the Portuguese, taking advantage of our long-suffering 

 patience, and despising it as cowardice ; who having broken 

 the peace so much to his satisfaction as we had so impru- 

 dently consented to observe it, making that idolator rich and 

 powerful by commerce and free trade, by which he not only 

 increased his power and strength with the enemy, but 

 obtained prestige with his confederates, and throughout the 

 Island greatly contributing to our confusion and shame — we 

 who were accustomed to conquer, by our very name and 

 fame alone as much as by our arms, which in time, weakened 

 by the idleness occasioned by commerce, would become rusty 

 and give the enemy a chance of getting into their grasp the 

 complete mastery of the whole Island ; when also he had by 

 his boldness begun to divide it amongst his sons, that there 

 was nothing so bad for the success of the war than per- 

 plexity and delay, so often the case in all great under- 

 takings which should be spontaneous at the commencement ; 

 for upon the execution of this Candian affair depended 

 the safety of the whole Island, and an example to all the 

 idolatrous princes throughout the East, giving them a 

 lesson to treat us with good faith and loyalty ; again, to 

 allow so great an enemy within the Island would make 

 the Portuguese appear bad soldiers and bad statesmen, for 

 allowing it to be a harbour of refuge for rebels and robbers, 

 whatever the public profit might be, for the lies and plots 

 of the barbarian, the lying olas and fictions he published, 

 had reduced the minds of the people to such a state that 

 a peace of this kind required greater caution, and caused 



